Pressure Points
Brenda sits at the kitchen table in her cramped flat, the linoleum cold beneath her bare feet even through her sensible wool socks.
The notebook lies open before her, Cody M's name circled in red ink.
Brenda stands and walks to the cracked mirror mounted on the back of her wardrobe door.
She studies her reflection with the detached scrutiny of a technician examining equipment.
Screw it. This rock groupie assignment will take a slutty makeover.
She opens the wardrobe and removes the wig stand.
The honey-blonde waves catch the dim light from the single overhead bulb, transforming it into something warmer, richer.
She holds it for a moment, feeling the synthetic fibres against her palms, then places it on her head and adjusts the combs until it sits securely.
The transformation begins immediately. Her face becomes a canvas rather than a statement.
Brenda applies the smoky eye makeup, building layers of shadow and liner until her pale blue eyes become dramatic, calculating, a tart.
The crimson lipstick goes on last, a slash of colour that redefines her mouth into something made for promises and alleyways.
She sheds the beige cardigan and pleated skirt without looking at them, stepping into a slinky dress in emerald green that catches the light like liquid.
The plunging neckline reveals the sharp collarbones she has learned to lure male eyes. The towering heels add four inches to her height and completely alter her centre of gravity, forcing her hips forward, her shoulders back, her entire posture into a declaration: I'm an easy fuck.
She practices her walk in the narrow hallway, the linoleum creaking beneath her heels. Trixie Tattle moves with the liquid confidence of someone who has never been overlooked, never been forgotten, never been beige.
The beaded clutch fits in her palm like a weapon. Inside, the miniature tape recorder waits, its red standby light invisible beneath the clasp.
Her mission is simple: open her legs or spread her tush to get the story.
The three groupies have been identified through careful research: Mandy, a dental hygienist from Leeds who posts obsessively about Cody M on fan forums; Jade, an art student at Manchester Metropolitan with a trust fund and a cocaine habit; and Priya, a pharmacy assistant whose older brother works security at the venue where Cody M's band played last month.
They have been bragging in private messages about their night with him, fragments that Brenda's editor passed along with the assignment.
She has spent three days establishing herself in their orbit, commenting on their posts, agreeing with their opinions, building the architecture of false intimacy that will admit her to their world.
Tonight, they are meeting at Jade's flat in Manchester, a converted warehouse space paid for by her parents' guilt over their divorce.
Cody M is performing in Liverpool, two hours away, which means the groupies will be drinking his absence, trading stories, competing for who was touched most, who was seen most, who mattered most.
Brenda knows how to get the filth from these smutty confessions.
The train to Manchester smells of stale coffee and cracking vinyl.
Brenda sits with her legs crossed at the knee, the emerald dress showing excess thigh, and watches her reflection in the dark window as the countryside blurs past.
Trixie Tattle smiles back at her, a woman who knows things, who will learn more, who will leave with everything she came for. Even as her pussy drips or her tushy smarts raw.
Jade's building has a broken intercom and a security door propped open with a brick. Brenda climbs three flights of concrete stairs, the heels clicking with each step, announcing her presence before she arrives.
The door to the flat is already open, music spilling out into the hallway—something loud and electronic, the kind of noise that turns conversation into shouting.
Mandy opens the door wider when she sees Brenda, her eyes doing the quick calculation of threat and opportunity that women learn young.
She is prettier than her forum posts suggested, with careful makeup and a bodycon dress in pink that strains slightly at the seams.
"You must be Trixie," she says, stepping back to admit her.
"Jade said you were into Cody too."
"Completely fucking obsessed," Brenda says, letting her voice carry to the edges of Trixie's manufactured enthusiasm.
"I would do literally anything to have been there that night. You have no idea how jealous I am."
The flat is one large room with a sleeping platform raised above a kitchen area, industrial windows looking out onto a dark courtyard. Jade sits on a velvet couch that looks expensive and uncomfortable, her legs tucked beneath her, a line of white powder visible on the glass coffee table before her.
She is thin in a way that suggests appetite rather than discipline, with bleached blonde hair and a vintage band T-shirt cut into a crop top.
Priya stands by the window, smoking, her pharmacy uniform replaced by jeans and a sequined top that catches the light when she turns.
"Sit," Jade says, gesturing to the couch beside her.
"We're just getting started. You want a drink?"
Brenda sits, letting her dress ride up further, letting them see the lace tops of her stockings.
"Desperately," she says. "And I want to hear everything. Every single detail. I need to know what I missed."
The alcohol helps them talk. Brenda nurses her vodka tonic and listens with the focused intensity that has always been her gift, asking the right questions at the right moments, making them compete for her attention.
Mandy describes the backstage pass her cousin forged, the security guard she flirted with, the moment of seeing Cody M in person—smaller than she expected, but hunkier, smelling of expensive cologne.
Jade interrupts with her own version, the trust fund that bought her way into the afterparty, the 'white lady' Cody M offered her from a sachet.
She spread it between her cleavage, and he snorted and licked it off.
"Right there in front of everyone. His tongue was so warm."
Priya says less, but Brenda watches her carefully, noting the way her hand shakes when she lights another cigarette, the way she keeps touching her phone as if waiting for something.
When she finally speaks, her voice is quieter, more precise.
"He likes toys," she says. "He had this whole bag. Things I've never seen before. He wanted to use them on all of us, but he was so fucked up he kept forgetting what he was doing. It was like he was performing being a person having sex."
This is the detail Brenda needs, the specific texture that will make her story undeniable.
She leans forward, letting her breasts press against the neckline of her dress, letting her voice drop into intimacy.
"Show me," she says. "Show me what he liked. I want to understand. I want to feel what you felt."
The suggestion hangs in the air for a moment, charged and unexamined.
Then Jade laughs, a sharp sound that breaks the tension, and stands, swaying slightly from the alcohol and whatever else she has taken.
"I have toys," she says. "Cody left some things. He was so out of it he forgot his whole bag. I've been keeping them as mementos."
She retrieves a leather duffel from beneath the sleeping platform, unzipping it with theatrical ceremony.
The contents spill across the glass coffee table: silicone dildos in various sizes and colours, a harness with metal rings, a small wand vibrator with a cracked casing, anal beads in graduated sizes, a bottle of lubricant with the seal broken, a pair of nipple clamps connected by a delicate chain.
Brenda reaches out and touches the largest dildo, purple and veined, feeling the weight of it in her palm.
"Did he use this on you?" she asks Jade, her voice soft, curious, without judgment.
"All of us," Jade says. "He wanted to see who could take the most. Mandy won."
She laughs again, but there is something underneath it, something Brenda recognises from a hundred interviews—the moment when performance cracks and something real shows through.
"He didn't even finish. He just kept going, switching between us, like he was trying to prove something."
Brenda stands and moves to the middle of the room, letting them all see her, letting the moment build.
"I want to understand," she says again. "I want to know what it felt like. Will you show me? Will you help me feel what you felt with him?"
Mandy is the first to move, the dental hygienist's careful nature giving way to the alcohol and the strange intimacy of the moment.
She stands and approaches Brenda, her hands reaching out to touch the emerald dress, to trace the neckline.
"You're stunning," she says, the words slightly slurred.
"You look like someone he would have wanted."
Brenda lets her hands be taken, lets Mandy guide her to the velvet couch. Jade turns down the music, replacing it with something slower, more atmospheric, and joins them, sitting on Brenda's other side. Priya remains by the window for a moment longer, watching, then crosses the room and kneels before the couch, her face level with Brenda's knees.
"Tell me everything," Brenda whispers, as Mandy's mouth finds her neck, as Jade's hand slides up her thigh.
"Tell me while you show me. I desire to be inside the scene with you."
They undress her with the brisk enthusiasm of the intoxicated, pulling the emerald dress over her head, unclipping her stockings from their garters, leaving her in only her lace underwear and the honey-blonde wig.
Brenda lies back on the velvet and lets them touch her, lets them use her body as a canvas for their memories of Cody M.
Mandy is the most eager, her dental hygienist's hands surprisingly deft as she selects toys from the collection, showing Brenda how Cody M holds them, where he puts them, what he says.
She uses the wand first, pressing it against Brenda's snatch through the lace of her underwear, the vibration making Brenda's hips lift involuntarily from the couch.
"He does this," Mandy says, her voice breathless, "but he won't let us come. He keeps turning it off, laughing, making us beg."
Brenda leans into the sensation, her hand finding Mandy's wrist and guiding the pressure harder.
"Like this?" she asks, her voice full of genuine arousal that surprises her.
"Does he make you beg like this?"
"Yes," Mandy gasps, and her free hand moves to her own dress, pulling it down to expose her breasts, her nipples hard and eager.
"He makes us repeat his name. He makes us promise things."
Jade has been watching, her pupils blown wide, and now she moves, climbing onto the couch and positioning herself above Brenda's face, her knees on either side of Brenda's head, her sequined top already discarded.
"He wants this," she says, pulling her jeans and underwear down in one motion, revealing herself, already wet, already ready.
"He wants us like this, all of us, mouths everywhere."
Brenda understands the geometry of the moment, the way the story requires her participation.
She reaches up and pulls Jade down onto her mouth, tasting her, the salt and musk of another woman's arousal flooding her senses.
She laps the folds of another woman's box.
Her tongue mussing into internal pinkness, while crinkly lipettes fondle her lips.
At the same time, she feels Priya's hands on her underwear, pulling it aside, and then the cool pressure of the purple dildo pressing against her slit.
"Slow," Priya says, her pharmacy assistant's precision evident even now.
"He goes slow at first, like he is being careful, but then he can't wait. He just wants to fill us."
The dildo pushes inside, thick and unrelenting, and Brenda moans against Jade's cunt, the vibration making Jade gasp and grind harder against her face.
"Uhh! Fugh! Uhh!"
Nothing beats a fast, spreading, stretching filling.
Mandy has abandoned the wand and is using her fingers now, two of them curling inside Brenda while her thumb works her clit, the rhythm familiar from her professional training, precise and relentless.
The flesh gouge, the flexing of a moisture-laden hollow space, no longer empty.
Fingers jagging.
Digits frigging.
Fem-jus squelching.
Brenda loses herself in the sensation, in the giving and receiving, her tongue flicking against Jade's clit even as she is filled and stroked and opened.
She is Trixie Tattle now, completely, the recording happening in her memory, the details she needs embedded in every touch.
"Uhh! Tell me more," she manages to gasp when Jade lifts slightly to let her breathe.
"Tell me what else he did."
"He fucks Priya with the harness," Jade says, her voice breaking as Brenda's tongue finds her again.
"He wears it, the big one, and he fucks her from behind while she goes down on Mandy. He wants to see everything at once."
Priya's hand stills on the dildo inside Brenda, and Brenda feels her shift, feels her moving up the couch, positioning herself.
"Turn," Priya says, her voice low and commanding in a way that suggests this is not her first time directing.
"Sixty-nine. He loves this. He says it is the only way he can be sure we are all real."
Brenda understands, and she moves, shifting her body even as Jade adjusts above her, until they are arranged in a chain on the velvet couch—Jade above Brenda, Brenda above Priya, Mandy beside them with her hands still working, still touching, still connecting them all.
She takes Priya into her mouth, the taste different from Jade, sharper, more complex, and feels Jade's mouth find her in turn, the wet heat of a tongue replacing fingers, replacing toys.
The sensation is overwhelming, the feedback loop of giving and receiving, of moaning against flesh and feeling the vibration of another's pleasure against her own most sensitive places.
Mandy has found the harness, is stepping into it, adjusting the straps around her hips, fitting the largest dildo into the ring.
She positions herself behind Jade, who lifts her hips to offer herself, and Brenda watches from below as Mandy pushes inside, as Jade's mouth falters against her cunt, as the rhythm establishes itself—Mandy fucking Jade, Jade licking Brenda, Brenda eating Priya, all of them connected in a circuit of pleasure and performance.
"Oohh! He films it," Priya gasps, her hips bucking against Brenda's mouth.
"Cody films everything. He says he wants to watch later, to see what he looks like when he is fucking us. Uhh! Uhh!"
This is the detail Brenda needs, the evidence that will make her story unassailable.
She files it away even as she feels her own orgasm building, the pressure of Jade's tongue insistent and skilled, the knowledge of being watched even in this private moment adding an edge of exhibitionism that she does not expect to feel.
"Fugh! Fugh!" she moans.
If this is work, what a job!
"Ahh! Did he keep the tapes?" she asks, the words muffled against Priya's flesh.
"His phone," Jade manages, her voice strained by Mandy's thrusting.
"Everything on his phone. Thousands of videos. He shows us, laughing, says he'll never delete them, says they are his playtime memories."
Brenda comes then, the information triggering something in her, the satisfaction of the scoop mixing with the physical release until she is crying out against Priya's cunt, her whole body shaking, the honey-blonde wig falling slightly askew.
"Rragghh! Fugh! Uuhhhh!"
She feels Jade follow her, feels the vibration of her moans against her oversensitive clit, and then Mandy, always the competitor, grinding the harness against herself as she fucks Jade through her own orgasm.
"Orggh!"
"Aahhh!"
They tumble together, a tangle of limbs and toys and sweat, the velvet couch damp beneath them.
Brenda lies still for a moment, letting her breathing slow, letting her mind return to its careful journalism.
She has what she needs: the chaotic bisexuality, the filmed encounters, the phone full of evidence, the contrast with the wholesome public image.
But she stays longer than necessary, letting Mandy curl against her side, letting Jade trace patterns on her thigh, letting Priya's hand rest possessively on her hip.
There is something here, she thinks, something beyond the story.
The emptiness of these women, their willingness to be used in exchange for proximity to fame, their need to be seen even in their degradation—it echoes something in her own hollow centre.
She does not examine this thought.
She files it away with all the others, all the moments of unexpected recognition that she has learned to ignore.
Confronting your sexual self is best done when?
When she finally sits up and begins to dress, they protest, they ask when they will see her again, they offer her their numbers and their social media handles.
"I'll find you," she says, Trixie's promise, Trixie's lie.
"We'll talk about Cody again. We'll create the memorable together."
She leaves them in the warehouse flat, the leather duffel of toys still open on the coffee table, the music still playing softly.
The Manchester night is cold against her skin, the walk to the train station long enough to let her compose and arrange the headline of a tabloid scandal.
Cody M: Not Mumma's Boy.
The story is already written in her perfect memory, waiting to be typed out in the morning, waiting to change everything for everyone except herself.